On March 11, I was delighted to learn that I had been given BC’s 2022 George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award.

Since 1994, the prize has honoured an outstanding literary career in the province. The award, which comes with a $5,000 honorarium, is presented jointly by the City of Vancouver, Vancouver Public Library, and BC BookWorld, partnered with the Writersʼ Trust of Canada and Yosef Wosk.

A presentation ceremony for the 2022 George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award will be held June 21 at 6 pm in the Yosef Wosk Poets’ Corner on the 9th floor of the downtown Vancouver Public Library, 350 West Georgia St. The event is free and open to the public. Also being presented at the event is the 2022 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature. This year that award went to whale biologist Alexandra Morton for her book about salmon fish farms, Not on My Watch.

Former winners of the Woodcock Award include Nobel laureate Alice Munro (2005), David Suzuki (2011), Joy Kogawa (2008), and journalists Barry Broadfoot (1997) and Paul St. Pierre (2000).

The Woodcock Award is named after UBC professor George Woodcock (1912-1995), an early champion of Canadian imaginative writing and, in 1959, founding editor of the scholarly journal Canadian Literature.